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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

Gary Soto was born in Fresno, California, on April 12, 1952, to working-class Mexican-American parents. As a teenager and college student, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, chopping beets and cotton and picking grapes. He was not academically motivated as a child, but he became interested in poetry during his high school years. He attended Fresno City College and California State University–Fresno, and he earned an MFA from the University of California–Irvine in 1976.

His first collection of poems, The Elements of San Joaquin (University of Pittsburgh Press), won the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum in 1976 and was published in 1977. Since then, Soto has published numerous books of poetry, including You Kiss by th’ Book: New Poems from Shakespeare’s Line (Chronicle Books, 2016), A Simple Plan (Chronicle Books, 2007), and New and Selected Poems (Chronicle Books, 1995), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Soto cites his major literary influences as Edward Field, Pablo Neruda, W. S. Merwin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Christopher Durang, and E. V. Lucas. Of his work, the writer Joyce Carol Oates has said, “Gary Soto’s poems are fast, funny, heartening, and achingly believable, like Polaroid love letters, or snatches of music heard out of a passing car; patches of beauty like patches of sunlight; the very pulse of a life.”

Soto has also written three novels, including Amnesia in a Republican County (University of New Mexico Press, 2003); a memoir, Living Up the Street (Strawberry Hill Press, 1985); and numerous young adult and children’s books. For the Los Angeles Opera, he wrote the libretto to Nerdlandia, an opera.

Soto has received the Andrew Carnegie Medal and fellowships from the California Arts Council, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Northern California.

A Walk through the Cemetery

I searched for twenty minutesFor my murdered friend’s grave,A small, white marker,# 356 it reads. He is notThis number, or any number,And he is not earth,But a memoryOf how he and I hikedThrough this Oakland cemetery—What, six months beforeHe was shot? We stoppedAt the Fred Korematsu stone,Righteous man, stubbornBehind bars for refusingThe Japanese-American internment in 1942—Jail for him, in suit and tie, god dammit.We righted flowers at his grave,Bright with toy-like American flags,And shaded our eyes to followThe flight of the hawks above.We left and walked up a slopeAnd visited a part of the cemeteryWhere the Chinese are buried,A division of races, a preference?

Now I’m at his grave marker—The stone for him has yet to arrive.His widow lives a mile upIn the Oakland Hills.Here is truth: she has a telescopeTrained on his grave.She pours coffee—she looks.She does the vacuuming—she looks.She comes home hugging bagsOf groceries—she looks.Perhaps she is getting upFrom the piano, an eye wincingBehind the telescope.If so, she would see meLooking at marker #366—This plot is available,Purchasable, readyFor a down payment.But the first installmentI must pay with my life.What then? His widowWill still keep the telescopeTrained on his grave,Now and then swivelingIt to #366, his friend.The buzzing bees would languidlyPass the honey between us.

by this poet

Nisei, remember the party line?How you shared the same line,The same mornings,The same problems—My girl is sick, the check was mailed late,The irrigation pump doesn’t work—Two hundred for the man to come out.

Where did the shooting stars go?They flit across my childhood skyAnd by my teens I no longer looked upward—My face instead peered through the windshieldOf my first car, or into the rearview mirror,All the small tragedies behind me,The road and the road’s curve up ahead.